Cocoa Ice Cream

I said I wanted a long distance relationship. I said, “I hate phones, but the relationship, the distance, I want that.”

You said people can only have so many things and maybe I have too many.

“Besides,” you said, “I don’t want to do that again.”

There was a night we were lying on your bed and you kissed me and pulled at my shirt. I said this might lead to sex and I said, “I always feel not disappointment, not really depression afterwards,” and you turned your back and I did the same and we didn’t talk for a while.

I have called you before and said, “we are here, and there are things bigger than us and then things bigger than that. Really, we are very little and need to act like it.” You couldn’t see the map I was pointing at when I said those things.

You said, “My mother mentioned once that loving cold men will have ill effects, that if you date cold men your organs will become dry or jumbled and health will deteriorate.”

I said we should lie on the carpet listening to NPR, petting the cat every Saturday.

You said that would be a waste, that was no way to spend an entire day.

After we didn’t talk for a while you said I should leave, and I said you are blocking out the time I bought you cocoa ice cream and angel-food cake for your birthday.

You said I was a week late with that.

I said you were still in China, I couldn’t mail the goddamn ice cream. I said, “What about the time you briefly lived in San Antonio and I drove there and we went to that one restaurant? The Thai food?”

You said I am constantly trying to convince you everyone is a categorically bad person. You said, “Every time I tried to have sex with you last year you fell asleep and I curled around you. It made my back ache and now I have to lie flat at night to straighten my spine again.”

You said, “Why are you wasting time? Why didn’t you major in business and learn about financing education systems? Why? Why?”

I said, “When we are in a long distance relationship I will write letters but I want to avoid the long phone conversations. My ears get sore.”

You said, “I don’t give a damn about ears.” You said, “Your ears are this small and need to act like it!” You were facing me when you said that and I knew what you meant.

I said we needed to spread out and learn to live in other cities, other climates.

You said other people.

I said, “No, just not the long phone conversations.” I said, “I was thinking Minneapolis.”

You said, “I’m not mailing any goddamn ice cream.”

I said, “Why?” I said, “Tell me why we can’t do this. Tell me my faults.”

You said, “You cook chicken too long because you are worried about salmonella. You constantly crack different bones in your arm and neck.”

You said, “Plus, you always list my faults.”

I said that you used to come over and cook eggplant, I love eggplant, but don’t know how to cook it.

You said everything has consequences, losses.

I said, “The first time I kissed you we were in a car and you turned your head away and I kissed your cheek. That happened three times that night.”

You said, “You had another lover then.”

Your house is old and I can hear it moving with the wind. After we were on the bed with our backs to each other not talking for a while I said I was worried a tree was going to blow over and crush us.

You said trees have deep roots. You said, “We’re not that little.”

I said my kneecaps ached, there was a pressure on my kneecaps. I said, “I feel older than I am.”

You said to be more careful with my phrasing. I stood up and walked outside. Flowers were beginning to grow in the yard.

I forgot the mention that the first time I kissed her was in the winter, but the cocoa ice cream was in the summer. Or the other way around. I thought about walking back to the house to ask you, but didn’t.